Dana White on whether UFC is planning for coronavirus problem

The outbreak of coronavirus in 2020 has been a major problem. Starting in China, it ha spread across the globe, with USA, Iran, Italy, Germany, and India all having cases from a large to a smaller extent.

UFC's first Chinese Champion Weili Zhang was advised to leave the country ahead of UFC 248, leading her to take her camp to Thailand. After that, she made her journey to Abu Dhabi before finally arriving in Las Vegas.

In a media scrum ahead of UFC 248 (H/T BJPENN.com), Dana White addressed the problem:

“Everybody is fighting with the coronavirus. This thing started as a Chinese problem and it’s turned into a global problem. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out through the rest of this year. This isn’t really a Chinese problem, it’s a global problem.

Given that UFC events normally see anywhere between 8,000-20,000 people, it could pose a major risk to people attending if there's anyone who unknowingly has Coronavirus. In Italy, it's being proposed that the top-tier soccer league be played behind closed doors for over a month.

Similarly, this will have a big impact on ticket sales and overall revenue for the UFC and White said that they've been planning for the last month and a half.

“We all should [have plans]. This is a serious problem. We’re already working. We’re looking at how this will affect our business this year, and how we battle this thing moving forward. We’re already working on this. We’ve been working on this [since] a month and a half ago.”

All we can hope is that the epidemic and panic surrounding it will die down. All sporting tournaments across the globe could face delay or jeapordy